ok - so i'm on a 27" i5 iMac 2.8 quad core with 4gb ram. the video card is "based" on the HD 5xxx series and may or may not be a mobility version of the HD 5750. i'm not really sure to be honest... even though a right click and into system props./hardware tell me it is. whatever. running xp sp3.

i'm running the game according to fraps at an average of 27fps... higher in the mountains and much lower in the cities and around crystals. i've got everything turned on except the last two check boxes in the config app... ambient occlusion and depth of field. i turned off the multisampling and turned everything else to its highest setting. i think it runs great - looks beautiful to me... but i can't help but wonder if i'm missing something with maxxed out multisampling etc...

if i get a $500 video card, an i7 920 with a barracuda hd and all the trimmings... am i going to notice a HUGE difference? i priced out the items to build my own pc at microwarehouse - came out to $1300. should i just wait until the ps3 version comes out? i've got the CE ordered and am looking forward to playing next week.

what are other mac users doing? what are low end pc users doing? i read a review on the geforce gtx 265 i think that said Crysis 2 was the benchmark for video cards... is FFXIV the exception?

FFXIV is an actual video game which is horribly unoptimized atm. I can't speak for Mac but PC in general it seems your performance is heavily tied to if FFXIV decides to like your card or not since some people with great setups aren't getting the performance they should, while those with less than optimal get better. On release day it will be easier to figure out (since the game SHOULD be optimized by then) but as of now..my current card keeps top FPS (dips to 40ish in crowded cities/camps) and it was barely $200 bucks.

Agree with theonehio. Wait and see how release goes. I'm getting the same results in Beta(60 FPS while wandering and fighting, 40-50 when in crowds and crafting in cities/camps). I paid close to that 1300$ building my system a few weeks ago, but I had to start from the ground up(because my monitor and everything else was a decade old, so this was an investment beyond the game<<I lie to myself frequently>>).

I built an AMD Phenom IIx4 955 BE based system, with an MSI 790FX-GD70 mobo, aftermarket cpu cooler, 4 gigs of low latency ram(7-7-7-21)with an EVGA GTX470 gpu(slightly overclocked out of the box).

I overclocked my CPU on air to 3.95 ghz and am running stable, so all seems good for my gaming future(unless the game takes a huge dive at launch, but I'm betting everything will be fine and optimized within a few weeks).

I'm not very familiar with Macs and how they differ from PCs. The last one I had was a joke, but that was like 20 years ago when 64 megs of ram was a lot, and my PC at the time was a joke, too;)

your point about waiting until retail to see how the optimisation works is the best idea i've heard so far... what if people are buying rigs based on the beta only to find that they can't run the retail?!

As I have tried to convey to others. Wait about two months and then investigate if there is something that YOU need to do. Everyone is in an upgrade/investigation frenzy, when the game isn't even released yet 8) If your system is way below the minimum requirements, then you should me looking at options. If you are able to run the beta at about 15-30 fps, sit back and relax and be patient.

your point about waiting until retail to see how the optimisation works is the best idea i've heard so far... what if people are buying rigs based on the beta only to find that they can't run the retail?!

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1393854 if you know how to read these, I have little experience with nvidia side of things and intel side of things. I haven't overclocked anything on this setup yet, but this gets great performance as is, it can likely get smoother with tweaks.

i'm a photographer so for me - my world has always been based on macs... of course once apple switched to intel models my life changed as i could now dual boot and use xp for my gaming... "always preferred pc gaming to console".

it's the best of both worlds for me.. or at least i thought it was - i play oblivion, ffxi, dragon age and battlefield BC2 on my xp boot with no issues at all - all running at high settings!

the ffxiv beta is confusing as **** to me... but like you both said, wait and see what retail brings. what do you think of my possible purchases?

SO I tried something. I disabled threaded core optimization and power management for the GPU to Performance. (This was all done in the Nvidia control panel. I'm not sure how ATI's control panel works but I'm sure it's similar)

My GPU usage increased and along with it, the games performance. I monitored the GPU usage with MSI afterburner (the overclocking program I use for my video card) and the GPU usage is all over the place but it's definitely used much more with my settings.

Try it out. Tell me what you guys think.

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They appeared from the sky, the one without a heart... "Omega"...And the one who followed it..."Shinryuu"... Final Fantasy 5

ok - so i'm on a 27" i5 iMac 2.8 quad core with 4gb ram. the video card is "based" on the HD 5xxx series and may or may not be a mobility version of the HD 5750. i'm not really sure to be honest... even though a right click and into system props./hardware tell me it is. whatever. running xp sp3.

It -is- a mobility card. iMacs don't have enough room for standard desktop GPUs, so they use mobility (laptop) versions, which have much, much lower performance. Upgrading one isn't really a feasible option.

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[ffxisig]55836[/ffxisig] Mikhalia: and FWIW, my posts are 95% helpful, informative, or funny. Mikhalia: only 5% or less of my posts are utter crap. Tyapex: 393 posts of utter crap... Mikhalia: Sounds about right.